Don’t you just love coconuts? Not only they taste delicious, but also coconuts are high in dietary fiber and antioxidants, that help in fighting infections, improving digestion and heart condition, preventing obesity, providing a quick energy boost and a lot more. They are so versatile for they can be added to any preparation –  from savory dishes to sweet items, to up the flavor.

But cracking open the coconuts is not an easy task. It’s definitely one tough nut to crack. Nature made coconuts tough to open so as to protect the embryo. The hard brown shell covers the edible white part of the coconut and that is the part which is most difficult to extract. But, what if we told you that there are a few easy ways to extract the super delicious white part?  Don’t believe us? Here are two super easy and quick techniques for cracking open a coconut.

Before you get started, locate the eye-like markings (dark indentations) on the coconut. There will be 2 or 3 such markings on the shell which are the weakest spots of the coconut. Puncture a hole in an eye of the coconut with a knife or nail and a screwdriver, and drain the water. Coconut water is delicious, so save it!

Method 1:

• Once all the water is drained out of it, place the coconut on a towel. The towel should be big enough to wrap the entire coconut.
• Wrap the coconut in the towel and place on the ground or on your kitchen slab.
• Hit it with a hammer all over several times so that it breaks open.
• These repeated strikes will help in removing the coconut flesh from the shell easily.
• Now you can use a kitchen knife to pry the white flesh away from the shell.
• Rinse the flesh and store it in the refrigerator for it to stay fresh for up to 7 days.

Method 2:

• Take a coconut, whose water is all drained out of it.
• Crack the coconut shell several times by tapping it along the equator with the back of a heavy kitchen knife (or the blunt part).
• After a few whacks, you will be seeing cracks developing on the coconut shell. Keep whacking along the cracks so that the coconut breaks open into two halves.

• Now place the 2 coconut halves open-side down on a baking sheet in the oven and bake it at 150°C (300°F) for about 10 to 15 minutes and remove.

• You can also remove the coconuts from the oven when the coconut flesh starts to separate itself from the shell.
• Let it cool down for a while. Take a knife and use it to pry the coconut flesh from the shell.

• Slide it between the flesh and the shell to extract the edible part easily.
• Once you do this, you will see the flesh pop out from the shell smoothly.
• Sometimes the flesh separates from the shell in one piece, but more often it separates into 2 or 3 large pieces.
• Store it in a refrigerator and use it as and when needed.

Note:

You can use your vegetable or potato peeler to remove the brown part off the extracted flesh of the coconut.

Wasn’t these methods easy? Now you don’t have to waste hours and energy trying to get hold of that delicious white part of the coconut.